02-12-2024, 06:33 PM
Similar to the comment above about "Green Eggs and Ham", I wondered about the small words, and the apparent artificiality of the character system and thought it would be interesting to compare with a modern equivalent, Toki Pona. I ran an analysis of an intermediate level text written in Toki Pona and got the following:
This used Toki Pona's alphabetic writing system rather than the glyph system. (Both easier to analize, and more likely to be relevant for comparison to Voynichese.) The result compares quite well with Voynichese:
Character Entropy (h1): 3.483557
Character Combo Entropy: 5.566203
Delta (h2): 2.082646
An interesting point to be made about the graphics that I have seen showing the probability of each letter combo, is that the vowels in alphabetic systems really stand out, because there tend to be fewer of them, and they pair well against the more common consonants. This is especially true in my analysis of my sample Toki Pona text, but similar patterns in the diagrams created from Voynich text only show lines popping about as much as vowels in latin/english/german/etc.
Looking at some of the graphics on this topic created around Voynich text, it looks like EVA o, e, y, a, s, and g are decent candidates. I'm inclined to eliminate e, because it matches a lot of consonant patterns. a and o are really the strongest candidates.
It's worth noting that some consonants that pair well with other consonants will sometimes stand out too, inconsistently across languages. These can generally be distinguished because they tend to pair with both vowels AND consonants. (Hence, my assertion that I would be inclined to eliminate e due it matching a lot of consonant patterns.)
Anyhow, I would say that the analysis suggests candidate vowels, and that e is likely a consonant that likes to pair with other consonants as the first letter. (Analogous to the pattern I see for n in English, but I wouldn't go so far as to propose that EVA e is English n.)
I would also say that as a low-information-density writing system, the analysis is further consistent with the language itself being artificial, or perhaps, an artificially constrained application of a contemporary (to early 1400s) language.
This used Toki Pona's alphabetic writing system rather than the glyph system. (Both easier to analize, and more likely to be relevant for comparison to Voynichese.) The result compares quite well with Voynichese:
Character Entropy (h1): 3.483557
Character Combo Entropy: 5.566203
Delta (h2): 2.082646
An interesting point to be made about the graphics that I have seen showing the probability of each letter combo, is that the vowels in alphabetic systems really stand out, because there tend to be fewer of them, and they pair well against the more common consonants. This is especially true in my analysis of my sample Toki Pona text, but similar patterns in the diagrams created from Voynich text only show lines popping about as much as vowels in latin/english/german/etc.
Looking at some of the graphics on this topic created around Voynich text, it looks like EVA o, e, y, a, s, and g are decent candidates. I'm inclined to eliminate e, because it matches a lot of consonant patterns. a and o are really the strongest candidates.
It's worth noting that some consonants that pair well with other consonants will sometimes stand out too, inconsistently across languages. These can generally be distinguished because they tend to pair with both vowels AND consonants. (Hence, my assertion that I would be inclined to eliminate e due it matching a lot of consonant patterns.)
Anyhow, I would say that the analysis suggests candidate vowels, and that e is likely a consonant that likes to pair with other consonants as the first letter. (Analogous to the pattern I see for n in English, but I wouldn't go so far as to propose that EVA e is English n.)
I would also say that as a low-information-density writing system, the analysis is further consistent with the language itself being artificial, or perhaps, an artificially constrained application of a contemporary (to early 1400s) language.